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Early One Morning is a major example of the kind of sculpture that established Caro as the leading young sculptor of the 1960s. In this work, his arrangement of planes and lines along a horizontal axis gave greater freedom in creating different rhythms and configurations. The work has no fixed visual identity and no single focus of interest. Rather, it unfolds and expands into the spectator’s space, its appearance changing with the viewpoint. The individual elements are unified by the bright red colour and Caro sees the way they cohere, making a sculptural whole, as being like the relationship of notes within a piece of music.

These two works are major examples of Caro’s painted metal sculptures which he has been producing since 1960. ‘Early One Morning’ is among the first in which the industrial associations of rough and massive girders were largely eliminated in favour of an effect of weightlessness.